George Nathaniel Curzon, 'Persia and India'

Signed 'Spy' (Leslie Ward), this chromolithograph caricatures George Nathaniel Curzon, then MP and Under-Secretary of State for India, at thirty-three. Ward renders him in immaculate frock coat and pinstripe trousers, one hand tucked behind his back, the other holding a calling card or note — the pose of a man accustomed to commanding rooms. The caption, Persia and India, salutes Curzon's recent travels and his published accounts of both regions, which had made him Parliament's self-appointed authority on British Asian policy. The portrait is notably straight-faced: Curzon's famously stiff bearing — later satirized in the rhyme about his 'superior person' air — needed little exaggeration. The plate's politics lie entirely in Curzon's imperial self-certainty, worn here like a second waistcoat.